I'll Be Forever With You
by Bethgreenewarriorprincess
Summary: Because my feelings about Bethyl and Normily are hopelessly intertwined, this story had to be written. Hope you enjoy. xoxoxo
1. Chapter 1

**This story was written as I was inspired by the idea of Emily and Norman being on a cruise ship together for the Walker Stalker Con. Normily is something that I cannot explain in words for the most part, but this little story will have to do. I hope you enjoy it.**

 **I wrote this while listening to Mescalito by Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood. (highly rec this song)**

 _"I'll rest in your shadow. You take the sorrow from your heart. And I'll be forever with you. Though the world keeps us apart."- Mescalito_

Emily felt very much like the little fish in the big pond. She was about to board the ship and though she was with her bandmates she couldn't help but be a little nervous. _He_ was going to be here. He was her costar, she reminded herself. Somewhere deep within her, her soul answered back.

 _You know he's much more than that and always will be._

She had been looking forward to this cruise as much as she had been dreading it because she hadn't seen him in months. Not since they broke things off. Her heart clutched inside her chest at the memory.

She shook her head in answer to something Hayley was asking her while they all made plans to meet up later, knowing she was distracted. It was okay though; Hayley knew better than anyone what she had gone through in the last year and how crazy her and Norman's relationship was. She knew too how hard it had been for her every single time she had to see him in recent weeks. Then again, it had been hard on him too. She saw it in every picture he posted on Insta, every song he tweeted and even in some of his event photos, his eyes seemed more drawn and tired.

Sometimes she wondered though. What the hell were they doing? This thing with them, this crazy dance that they'd perfected over time, was supposed to be forever. They were supposed to get the happily ever after that none of the characters either of them had ever played seemed to get.

Then, before she could figure out what had happened, it was all over. The dance was done; the song ended and she spun right out of his arms and was left standing against the wall, like the lonely little flower she'd always thought she was.

 _Time apart. Figure things out. Get our heads straight._

They called it a lot of things, but the reality was they weren't together anymore. And in breaking up, she felt something inside her was irrevocably broken as well.

But then she'd noticed things. Something changed. With him. Something she hadn't expected. He was Norman Reedus and not many people expected things of him. But she did. And she thought he did too; at least where this was concerned. But he was always surprising her. It's why when he'd texted her last night and said he'd done some thinking about what she'd said and he needed to see her, those broken pieces of herself started to feel like they might not be shattered.

"I miss you, Em." Four words and a heart emoji and it was enough. It was enough for now. Her heart had skipped those same beats they'd skipped back when it was all new between them. Back when it was _good_. So she'd said yes.

Maybe it was wrong. Maybe she shouldn't. But all the maybes in the world couldn't keep her from this meeting now.

The tricky part of course had been trying to get away from both their cast-mates and the fans alike, to someplace where they wouldn't be seen. So the only thing that made sense was to meet in the area outside where all their rooms were located and access was off-limits to the fans.

She saw him first. Standing off to the side, thumb against his lower lip, eyes flitting nervously about behind those Ray-Bans. She couldn't see that part, but she knew him well enough to know he was always going to be watching out for her. Watching out for them.

Looking at him now, standing there, his presence seeming to take up the entire corridor, she wasn't sure what had ever happened. Why were they torturing themselves when everything they needed was right here in the spaces between them. Suddenly, she just needed to be in his arms. She must have made some sound and then she wondered sometimes if Norman Reedus didn't have the same hunter's sense that Daryl Dixon had.

He turned and if a facial expression could be translated into words, his said " _I missed you so bad, I need you, I love you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry_."

Maybe it was her that moved and maybe it was him, but all she knew was suddenly the distance melted away between them, slipping through the very cracks of this ship and sealing up what she already knew to be true. Looking up into his eyes from his trembling embrace, this was where she was supposed to be.

* * *

Norman had often wondered, before all this, if Daryl Dixon would possibly hope to know what to do with Beth Greene if she ever landed in his arms. And here he was, holding Emily Kinney in his and it struck him in near hilarity that he had no clue what to do either. He never had. Beth Greene was coming to life under his lips and he realized he had no more idea what to do with her than the redneck he portrayed.

Fortunately, he didn't have long to think about it. Because it seemed to him that Emily Kinney knew exactly what to do with the man she was wrapped up in. She kissed him with passion. She kissed him with love and devotion. She kissed him with barely restrained fever that was starting to match his own. He slid his hands further back on her head cradling her head in in the crook of his arm, and knew now how fucking stupid he'd been this entire time.

But he didn't mention it, just yet, and neither did she. He thought maybe she was just as glad as he was that the distance that had separated them for so many months was now gone and here she was, her lips pressed against his and a sigh in her throat as his fingers gripped her a bit tighter and his breathing was a bit shallower. Like she'd disappear on him again. Like she'd slip away and under a barrage of hurt feelings and broken promises, swear him off for life leaving him to lie in a bed of regrets. He'd made it himself, just like he had his whole life, but lie there he must.

But, she was _here_. She was here and she was kissing him back like she missed him as much as he did her. Suddenly, she broke away from him and leaned back in for another quick peck to his lips and whispered between them conspiratorially. "Let's get out of here."

With relief, with gratitude, he nodded. He didn't think he'd be able to speak if he wanted to. She grabbed his hand and before he could blink his eyes and make sense of what had just happened between them, he was being pulled along the long corridor towards the bank of rooms at the front of the ship where they were all staying.

As they travelled down the long hallway, he expected someone to jump out from one of the suites any instant and spot them, hand in hand, like they were running. Running like Beth and Daryl had, except this time it didn't feel as if he were running from something. It felt like he was running towards something. He'd been running for such a long time, he was surprised he could tell the difference at all.

They finally reached the end of the hallway and Emily turned to him, slightly breathless as she pushed the button at the group of elevators that would lead them to his suite. "You did want to go to your room, right?" God bless her sweet soul, she blinked up at him, blue eyes bright as always, as she rested her fingers gently against the blue denim of his shirt, like this had been the plan all along.

He knew they'd have to talk about it eventually. What had happened. What had gone so horribly wrong and how they'd go about fixing it. He'd done a lot of soul searching in the last several months and he knew what he wanted now. He knew all he would ever want was leading him through elevator doors, her delicate bones slipped right between his, pulling him along gently.

He nodded and winked at her. "You _know_ I do."

As the elevator doors closed, she grinned in answer and launched herself back into his arms, and he was ready and waiting. It took him a while, maybe even longer than it would have taken Daryl Dixon even (and that was saying something), but he'd missed her so much since she was gone and he never wanted to feel that way again.

He'd walked around like a dead man long enough. It was time to come home. To this girl in his arms. To forever.


	2. Chapter 2

They barely have time to get through the door and she sits her phone down on the table just inside the entryway to his suite. Villa really. The place is huge. She turns back around and his lips are on hers and she goes back against the wall, her head bouncing lightly on the surface and she laughs against his lips.

"Sorry," he is muttering as he is reaching for the button on her jeans. His fingers are nimble and his movements are the ones well practiced during their many months together.

"It's fine. It's kinda hot." He likes it when she tells him stuff like that and for some reason, she finds that she is most honest about sexual things around him. She doesn't have to be worried around him about how someone perceives her. He knows all of her and she knows he loves her no matter what.

He's using both hands now to unzip her jeans and ease them and her panties from her hips. She steps out of them easily after toeing off her favorite boots and kicking them to the side. She is already at work on removing his shorts but takes a minute to lift her arms over her head for him to remove her shirt.

Her nipples harden at the rush of air that hits them and everything sort of slows in that moment as Norman takes a minute and pauses to look at her. "God I missed you, Em." He is saying before shrugging out of his shirt that she has finally managed to unbutton.

"I missed you too. So much." They are finally naked and she thinks for a minute he means to fuck her right here against the wall and she thinks she might not even mind it so much but instead he reaches down and picks her up into his arms and carries her to his room off the main living area.

She looks into his eyes and realizes in that moment that this is what she has been waiting for. She has been waiting for him to walk back into her life and sweep her off her feet and now here he is. Doing just that.

For just a minute, before he enters his bedroom off the main suite, she forgets how to breathe.

This is how she remembers it being with them. Sweet, sensual and the world soft and hazy like they are the only two people left alive. And for this moment, they really are.

Norman realizes the moment he picks Emily up into his arms, he is carrying her much the same way Daryl Dixon carried Beth Greene out of that hospital. The irony is not lost on either of them as he gazes deep into her eyes as he lays her out on the bed and lies next to her his hand coming up to caress her hip before skimming lower to find her already slick with wet and warm; waiting for him. He doesn't have to wonder anymore. She has clearly wanted this for as long as he has.

 _"God. Norman. Yes, just like that_." She is saying. This. This is what he missed. This familiarity. Knowing that she likes it as he runs his lips along the smooth column of her neck where she has tilted her head to the side so he can access it. He likes knowing that he'll elicit a sigh from her lips as he nuzzles her neck with the scruff of his beard and making sure his lips are right outside the shell of her ear so she can hear him. Loud and clear.

"Want you on my face, Em." He has wanted it since they first walked in the room. He'd thought about it a lot. How much he'd missed her taste because yes, she tasted that good. Going down was something he had always enjoyed and even excelled at.

But going down on Emily, it was something else entirely and as he whispered those words gruffly in her ear, he knew without looking at her that her eyes had rolled back in her head at the thought. He tried not to let it go to his head, but it kind of did anyway.

She'd told him once that he's the only guy that can make her come in that position and he hasn't forgotten it. Maybe some people wanted awards and certificates for their accomplishments in life. But him? He'll take Emily telling him that any day of the week.

But it's more than that, he realizes as she is doing his bidding and climbing up his body to straddle his face. It's far more than that. This is his favorite thing and he takes a minute to examine the why of it as she is, with purpose, settling her gorgeous thighs on either side of his head. It's more than the taste of her, though that is part of it.

It's more than just the fact that he admittedly has an oral fixation. He thinks it's this position in particular, the position that he knows she is taking complete control. She is there because she wants to be. Yes, he's creating a sensation with his tongue that makes her gasp and moan and ride him like it's the goddamn rodeo.

But it's her being there, placing that ultimate trust in him to "get her there" as she rides his face that spurs him on. She has no qualms in making sure gets what she is after, a long and shaking release. He thinks it's that Emily Kinney, in that moment, somehow becomes Beth Greene and he isn't sure if he's Daryl or not, but he thinks he might be. As feral as the growl that is torn from his throat as her lips lower to his mouth, glistening, pretty pink folds already aflutter under his tongue, he thinks there might be a little bit of Daryl Dixon in him after all. Or maybe a lot.

As her pace becomes frenzied, he brings his hands up to either hip. God, was she always this slight under his hands? Did her hip bones always feel just like this as his thumbs press into her sides? He thinks about all the times he has done this for her before, but this time is somehow different. This time, as his tongue laves at her core, he thinks there is some finality in this for him with her. This time, with her, is going to be different.

What isn't different is the soft keening in the back of her throat just before she comes. This sound he recognizes and he can't help but smile. She is writhing over him, hips undulating as she grinds herself onto him until she is flooding his mouth with her sweetness and he fucking loves it. Finally, her hips stop moving and he lets her go, almost bereft as she literally falls off of him to the side, lying back on the bed, panting and he finds it amusing that she is out of breath, hair spread out above her.

She is looking at him through one half-open eye, a sleepy smile on her face, and even if he can't see it, he knows the smile reaches her gaze as she looks at him. "God, I missed that."

And he knows exactly what she means. "Me too." His grin is wicked and he wiggles his eyebrows for effect and she is giggling as she shifts her body around on the bed to lie beside him, fingers coming down to find his own, his still slick with her, and his dick twitches in that simple knowledge.

"I missed you, Em." But her fingers are leaving his hand to come up to his mouth, her forefinger resting against his lips.

"I know. I missed you too. Let's have this. We need it. _I need it._ " She is telling him she doesn't want to talk about it yet. What happened and what went so horribly wrong and it's okay.

Because he literally can't think of anything else while her tiny fingers come up to close around his cock and she whispers _"Your turn."_

Her lips come to wrap around the head of his cock, her nails dragging, just so, against his balls and it _is_ his turn, he thinks. His turn to gasp and moan and god help him, his turn to have his hips coming up off the bed, writhing against her mouth because there is nothing better than this. Her lips are warm, soft, and her mouth wet and waiting with every assisted slide of her hand in carefully orchestrated movements against her mouth's actions. It's fucking Heaven.

It's why it's almost physically painful as he pulls her off of him before it's too late because he means to fuck her this night. He thinks she has had the reins long enough and within a couple of movements (it takes a bit longer than he anticipates in his shakily aroused state) he has her pinned beneath him.

He takes a moment as he is poised above her to look between them where she is split for him, all that pink flesh, wet, bare and swollen from his oral ministrations, and groans in anticipation. It's been far too long since he's been inside her and he wants to savor this moment. Often, it is just before he enters her that he feels the closest to her. As if he is just waiting, asking to be invited in. She sighs beneath him, relaxes into the bed and finally, pressing his hips forward, he slides inside her tight heat.

God. Just. _Fuck yes_. She feels so good and he thinks in that moment as her walls come to grip his length he could die and it really wouldn't even matter. He's fallen back into her and back into all that they are and, for a moment, nothing hurts. There is no painful rift between them. They are closer than two people could ever be and for the first time in a very long time, he feels whole.

He feels wholly complete and he knows without a doubt, it's her. It's Emily. She is all he has ever needed and he doesn't know for the life of him why it has taken him this long to figure it all out.

As he begins to move inside her, he means to let her know that this is it. This is it for them. They are going to make this work, starting with this moment, driving into her, her body melted into his. They are one, as they are meant to be. It's all going to be okay now.

She feels almost like she is flying. It's like this with them every time. Like she has climbed the highest peak of the tallest mountain by her house in L.A. She is slightly breathless and her skin is slicked with a sheen of sweat, but the view at the top is glorious.

She looks at her view now, Norman above her on the bed, her body pliant beneath his. She loves this. As much as she loves being on top most of the time, she loves being supplicant under him, submitting to his will. She loves him pumping in and out of her as he fucks her in long, sure strides that she feels deep in her core.

For she is completely in his submission at the moment. She isn't Emily. She isn't even Beth. She isn't anyone but a woman being wholly and completely consumed by her man.

And he is consuming her. He had devoured her with more than his mouth this evening. She thinks sometimes she is consumed by him in all ways a girl can be consumed by a guy. He moves one hand to smooth the hair back from her forehead, mid-thrust he does this. And it's this gesture that is nearly her undoing.

It's always the simple things that have her quivering all the more under his touch. His other hand comes up to the crest of her hip and he lifts her leg slightly, opening her more fully, allowing him to come to rest in the full cradle of her hips, pulsing in and out, just so. Slow, long drags that scrape against her clit and she is moaning against his shoulder in no time. For he has pulled her up and into in his arms, knowing the storm that is gathering in her body, just beneath the surface.

It's this perfect rhythm they've established that she has come to miss the most. A finely choreographed dance of mingled breaths, slide of skin, and slick of sweat on their bodies and his length impaling her on every thrust and he is hitting her in all the right ways and in all the right places and that's when it happens. One minute she is flying and then she is falling, her orgasm finding her and claiming her, and he is right there to catch her when it's all over. Though she might have left this plane in some way, he is still there, keeping their rhythm, keeping their pace.

"I love you, Em." He whispers and then it's her turn to shore him up as she presses her forehead to his and then he is fucking her. He is fucking her long and hard and fast as his release builds. He is clutching her hips, pressing her legs back farther, spreading her wide as he drives himself into her, then he moans low and long one time before he is grunting and gasping as he spills his seed deep inside her.

It's three more half-thrusts before he finally comes to rest against her and she realizes she was wrong earlier. _This_ was what she missed the most. Norman Reedus, _spent_ ; the love of her life lying in her arms, completely worn out from their lovemaking.

She lets him lie there a few minutes before she attempts to shift her body because she doesn't want this moment to end. She wants to hang onto the musk of their mixed scents, the low and waning light disappearing from the port window outside this ship, their soft and easy breathing in the same space for what seems like such a long time. And it has been. Too long.

Finally he rolls off of her and gathers her into his arms where she happily goes. It's a long time before either of them is willing to move. As if they both sense it. They need to figure things out, yes, but they also need this time together. To remember how good they are.

She thinks of that song Beth Greene sang to Daryl Dixon with a wistful smile that she hides partially as she burrows more deeply into his side.

 _"We'll lay in the lawn and we'll be good_." The words float into her mind and she is singing before she knows it and he is listening in rapt attention, just like always. He loves it as much as she does and she remembers all the other times she has sang to him in bed, just like this.

 _"Now I've got friendships to mend_

 _I'm selfishlessly dispossessed_

 _You don't wanna be my boyfriend_

 _And that's probably for the best."_

He stops her with his finger resting over her lips and that's, oddly, when the tears come. She is crying as his lips come to hers and she tastes the salt of her own tears on his tongue as he kisses her so sweetly. So softly. He pulls away to look at her and she almost knows what he is going to say before he says it.

"It's not for the best." He says. And he isn't talking about the lyrics. And he isn't talking about the vaguely ambiguous way that song was written into the script for Beth and Daryl. He is talking about them.

"It's not?" Her eyes search his and she finds what she has always wanted to find there all along. A resting place.

"It's not. I want to be your boyfriend. If that's what you want." And God, it _is_. She is smiling as she pulls away to search his face. He is serious. The most serious she has ever seen him because usually when she has asked this question, 'what are they to each other', she is met with displaced humor or a change of subject. And now, here it is being spelled out for her and all she can do is smile at him.

She thinks in that minute, where he is waiting for her response, that there is a little bit of Daryl in that shy and hesitant gaze, the one where he isn't so sure what her reaction is going to be to his admission of love. His desire for permanence between them.

"It's all I've _ever_ wanted." She says as she falls back into his arms and he brings his lips to hers and she thinks he says good, but she isn't sure; her heart is beating so fast against the realization of what just transpired.

He is finally hers and it feels like the final piece of a puzzle just slid into place, making the picture clear and bright. _He_ is all she has ever wanted and she thinks that now, no matter what has happened between them in the past, this now, is different. It's going to be different this time. They're going to make the best of it and that is all she can hope for.

Author Notes: Hiding 4-eva because writing Normily sexy times is daunting af. Pun totally intended! xoxoxo


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